Book

Digitale Demenz: Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen

Jan 2012 🇩🇪 Droemer Verlag

"Digitale Demenz" is Ulm psychiatrist and neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer's 2012 bestseller, which introduced the term "digital dementia" to German-language debate. Drawing on cognitive-neuroscience research and clinical case material, Spitzer argues that offloading everyday mental tasks — navigation, memorization, spelling — onto phones, computers, and game consoles is linked, in his account, to weaker memory formation and slower skill development, particularly in children and teenagers whose brains are still developing. He associates heavy screen-media use in childhood with reduced reading and attention spans, disrupted sleep, low mood, weight gain, and reduced classroom learning, framing "digital dementia" as a pattern of risk rather than a formal clinical diagnosis. The book was widely covered and sharply contested among German academics; TechKids Foundation includes it as an influential, if debated, early statement associating heavy device use with children's cognitive and physical development.

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CITATION

Spitzer, Manfred. Digitale Demenz: Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen. Droemer Verlag, 2012.

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